Dewey Know Who's Not Going To Trial? Defendant No. 4, Zachary Warren
Congratulations to both the promising young lawyer and the prosecution and putting this unfortunate episode to rest.
Before and after: Zachary Warren in early 2014 (left) and late 2014 (right).
After the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office failed to convict the three leaders of Dewey & LeBoeuf on any criminal charges related to the Biglaw firm’s epic failure, many of us wondered: what about Zachary Warren? In case you don’t recall, Zach Warren was defendant number four in the case, accused of conspiring with the “big three” — former chairman Steven Davis, former executive director Stephen DiCarmine, and former CFO Joel Sanders — back when Warren was a lowly client relations manager at Dewey. This alleged conspiracy took place ages ago, after Warren’s college years at Stanford but before he graduated from Georgetown Law and clerked for two federal judges.
The case took a toll on Zach Warren. His post-clerkship employment at D.C.-based Williams & Connolly, one of the nation’s most high-powered (and high-paying) law firms, got put on hold. Warren had to cool his heels in the hinterlands, working on plaintiff-side employment cases for the Employment Rights Group, a small firm in Pittsburgh.
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Well, look for Zach Warren to get back into fighting shape. His battle with Manhattan District Attorney’s office has come to an end, as reported by Law360:
Former Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP client relations manager Zachary Warren has reached a deferred prosecution deal just weeks before the trial over his alleged role in the defunct firm’s collapse was set to begin.
Warren, 31, who was indicted in the firm’s fraud scheme as an alleged low-level co-conspirator, inked the deal with Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, the parties told the New York State Supreme Court on Tuesday. The deal calls for the charges to be dropped in one year if Warren completes 350 hours of community service.
Warren will most likely perform his community service in Washington, D.C., according to the New York Law Journal. This agreement clears the way for Warren to start work at Williams & Connolly in the fall, according to the New York Times.
Warren’s lawyers — Paul Shechtman and William Murphy of Zuckerman Spaeder, a go-to law firm when you’re in deep doo-doo — expressed satisfaction with the case’s resolution. “We are deeply pleased that the district attorney’s office has decided to dismiss the charges,” they said in a statement.
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Warren was scheduled to go to trial in March. The DA’s office tried to sound confident about its case — Joan Vollero, a spokeswoman for Cy Vance, said in a statement that “had this case proceeded to trial, we would have met our burden of proof” — but no objective observer would accept that spin. The evidence against Davis, DiCarmine, and Sanders was so much stronger than the evidence against Warren, and their case still ended in a mistrial. If the DA couldn’t capture the whales, how was it going to snare the minnow?
So this agreement — given the evidence (or lack thereof), and given Warren’s minor role at Dewey — is actually not a bad outcome for the DA’s office, all things considered. They get to save some face — this deal is less humiliating than an outright acquittal or a mistrial — and they can concentrate their resources on the retrial of Steve DiCarmine and Joel Sanders. (Steve Davis, like Warren, also accepted a deferred-prosecution agreement — but Davis’s deal, unlike Warren’s, bars him from the practice of law in New York.)
Congratulations to Zach Warren and to the Manhattan DA’s office on resolving this matter amicably. It’s nice to see the occasional triumph of common sense in the criminal justice system.
Prosecutors Have Deal With Second Dewey & LeBoeuf Figure [New York Times]
BREAKING: Dewey’s Zachary Warren Gets Deferred Prosection Deal On Eve Of Trial [Law360]
Ex-Dewey Junior Manager Avoids Trial in Deal With DA [New York Law Journal]
Earlier: Partial Verdict Announced In Dewey & LeBoeuf Criminal Trial
New And Juicy Details Of Zachary Warren’s Alleged Role In The Dewey Debacle
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